KLITTERN (aesopica)
With Luis Garay/Mervan Malwin Ürkmez, Stanislav Iordanov, Elena Wolff. Contributions by Achinoam Alon, Nora Kapfer, Flora Klein, Carla Renée Loose. Borrowing from Kathy Acker, Aesop, Gregory Dark, Alexandra Kollontai, Quirinus Kuhlmann, Peter Kropotkin, George Jackson et al.
‘Apart from the flock, a sheep encounters a wolf. To avoid being eaten, it devises a ruse. It asks the wolf to play the flute so it can dance one last time…’
KLITTERN (aesopica) works through the fable ‘A Wolf and a Kid’, ascribed to the ancient poet and slave Aesop. Borrowing from and dressing up in the idioms of others, the play assembles tactics and gestures of resistance for situations where no recourse to institutionalised forms of power seems advisable. Figurations of non-participation and withdrawal appear on the scene: strategies of camouflage, practices of friendship, promises of radical change, aestheticist compensations, apocalyptic fantasies and mystical transformations.
A key theme is the role of art within the correlation of power and resistance, in which supposedly autonomous fantasy formations are always also politically situated actions. As the simple plot of the fable is repeatedly enacted anew, the various artistic practices of the performers involved are translated into specific configurations of this relation and act as a repertoire of resistive techniques in the face of power’s contiguity with violence.
Co-produced by Otto Falckenberg Schule/ Münchner Kammerspiele. Supported by Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München, Kunstverein München, OTTE Metallbau, Richard Stury Stiftung, streitfeld. Photography by Constanza Meléndez, Krafft Angerer.
Awarded with the prize of Körber Studio Junge Regie 2022.
Reviews:
Egbert Tholl, Seltsam leuchtendes Kunstwerk, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28 March 2022.
Katrin Bettina Müller, Im Wald der Ausgestoßenen, taz, 7 February 2023.